[techthroway443]

This is the saddest part to me:

children as young as two years old are now being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a cocktail of powerful drugs, many of which were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Why are we giving psychiatric drugs to people whose brains aren't fully developed, especially when there is still so much we don't understand about how the brain works?

[batter]

Who said you should blindly trust doctors? Pretty often you'll feel like Don Quixote when dealing with US healthcare.

[techthroway443]

Why consult a health professional if you're not going to trust what they have to say?

When a doctor tells a parent that their two year old is suffering from bipolar disorder and the way to treat that is to take a cocktail of meds then it's not the parents fault when they follow that advice.

[phil21]

Why treat doctors as infallible? Do you bring your car to the mechanic and blindly trust what they have to say?

Doctors are no better or worse than any other profession out there. 80% of doctors are pretty bad, and the other 20% make the rest look decent. Just like any profession that has ever existed.

You should be double-checking absolutely every single thing a doctor is telling you - especially important things like giving a two year old psychiatric meds that are not approved by the FDA.

I do agree with your point that it's not the parents "fault" - but I also would be pretty upset with my parents if they blindly followed whatever advice some guy with a piece of paper told them.

[lhuser123]

Couldn't agree more. I even think that some doctors care less about patients than mechanics care about cars.

[techthroway443]

Trusting a professional's recommendation is not treating them as infallible, it's called "using the advice you paid for". No I don't blindly trust my mechanic, you shouldn't blindly trust anyone but generally when you seek out a professional's opinion on something it's because you value their expertise.

> You should be double-checking absolutely every single thing a doctor is telling you

Right, because the average person who knows next to nothing on mental health is going to make a better judgement call on which medication to prescribe their child than their doctor.

Guess what, if that were the case we wouldn't have a story here.

[icebraining]

Right, because the average person who knows next to nothing on mental health is going to make a better judgement call on which medication to prescribe their child than their doctor.

Often, yes, the person who cares about the child more than about themselves will make a better decision than a doctor who has 300 more random kids to check that week.

Now, it depends on how that double-checking is done. The simplest way is to get a second (and third, and fourth) opinion, and then judging based on them all.

[bleair]

There's a lot doctors just don't know.

You should always be your own advocate, and you should always consider the treatment plan suggested by your doctor and ask questions. Note, please understand I _not_ telling you to be a dick. Doctors have a tough time of it and are expected to give "solutions" that make the patient happy. However, I say prescribed treatments should have an expected range of observable effect(s). Also treatments almost always have additional side effects. Ask about both of these.

Others have already said, but doctors can and do get things wrong.

I broke a collar bone. In the course of recovery I've seen three different physical therapists and while their suggestions overlapped some, there was a wide range of recommended exercises and stretches. One of them was great and super effective, one was meh, and one was down right useless.

[leekyle333]

This is one of the things that really keep me up at night. None of these drugs have been tested on children, and most of them haven't been subject to long term clinical trials even with adults.

ADHD is one of the scariest overperscribing stories. Researchers projected 3% of children have ADHD yet ADHD meds have been pushed on 15% of all children. Is it worth helping one kid to mistreat five? Source:https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/books/review/adhd-nation-...

[dragonwriter]

> Why are we giving prescription drugs to people whose brains aren't fully developed yet

Presumably, you left the word “psychiatric” out, or do you really think we shouldn't be, e.g., giving antibiotics to infants with life-threatening infections?

[techthroway443]

Thought that'd be obvious seeing as how the text I quoted and entire article is referring to psychiatric drugs.